A journal about my personal thoughts regarding evolving a comprehensive social media strategy at a large company.

February 18, 2009

Two Approaches To Proficiency

By now, you've probably figured out that I'm not all that involved
in the day-to-day of EMC's social media efforts. I mean, I still know
what's going on, I'm just usually the spectator these days.

That's
good. Frankly speaking, I wouldn't want to be the bottleneck in
something so important. At some point, you have to get out of the way,
and let things take on a life of their own.

Thought I'd share
with you two interesting developments on how we're improving our
overall proficiency -- one formal, one informal.

The Importance Of Proficiency

If you've been following
our journey, you'll remember from early on that I made this all about
social media proficiency: that we had to help our employees become
comfortable and proficient at all this social media stuff -- not only
the tools, but the skills, behaviors and attitudes that are
oh-so-important.

Simply being able to know what Twitter does is
one thing; understand the role it plays and how to use it effectively
is quite something else.

The EMC Social Media Club

Yes,
a club for people who are simply interested in all this social media
stuff -- nothing more. Turns out that there are a lot of people who
are curious about all of this hubbub, and they want to learn more
simply by hanging out with people who already do.

I was asked to
speak at the first club meeting, which I did. I gave a quick recap of
how EMC got into all of this, some of the original thinking, and a few
of the big milestones along the way. Got great feedback from many
people that sharing that context was very useful indeed.

As I
watched the commentary on the club's group space, it was pretty clear
there were all sorts of people who were glad that they could connect
with others who were more proficient, ask their newbie questions, and
generally feel supported.

What better way to help overall proficiency than establishing a club or group of like-minded people?

Congrats
to Stu, Jamie and a few others who put this together. I would have
never thought of this on my own, but I'm glad someone did!

Community Development 101

Again,
if you've been following all of this, you'll remember me moaning on
just how hard it was to teach people the basics of community
formation. It's hard, gritty work. It takes a lot of time and
effort. It's not easy, and you need help from others. And so on.

To
this day, we patiently explain to group after group that simply posting
a bunch of crap on a web page with a discussion capability is not a
community; it's a web page with a bunch of crap on it and a discussion
forum.

Our external community team (ECN) had established a nice
methodology for community building a while back. They've got
checklists and guide documents for each phase of the process --
something to behold in and of itself. And it's been quite useful to
point an eager-eyed prototypical community developer to their space and
say "have at it!".

But now they've done one better -- they'd
established coursework and a curriculum for these same prototypical
community developers. You can now actually take a class at EMC on this
topic, and receive a bit of certification in the process.

People
tell me there's strong interest from across the company in taking these
classes. I'm hoping that the people who do the formal educational
stuff at EMC take notice, and offer to make this a formal part of our
professional development curriculum at the company.

Imagine making community development a recommended course for aspiring career professionals at EMC?

That'd be quite cool indeed.

The Journey Continues

I
couldn't have predicted either of these important developments a few
years back when we started focusing on all of this. However, I did
expect that we'd get all sorts of creative and passionate people
involved, and they'd come up with clever ideas and capabilities none of
us early pioneers would ever contemplate.And that's exactly what's happening now.

We've
built a social computer that innovates, and comes up with
self-improving ideas to expand and refine what it does, and how it does
it.

Comments

Having recently "presented" the Blueprint to Success to some folks in EMEA, I can testify that the comprehensive information + logical structure = clear direction. The coursework is a great idea and great leap forward (apologies to Chairman Mao). In addition, a space for community managers to exchange best practices and ideas would be a form of continuous improvement and education.